by Amy Stewart
“I also don’t believe that you said, brusquely, as they put it, ‘Come along. I want you. You’re pinched!’ ”
I started to laugh, but it hurt so much that I had to press my hands against my ribs to keep still.
Fleurette was sitting on the arm of Norma’s chair, reading over her shoulder. “ ‘The man was the Reverend Dr. Herman Albert von Matthesius, who had escaped . . .’ Oh, we know all that. Here we go. ‘He gazed at the young woman in astonishment.’ ”
“He didn’t gaze at me,” I said. “He was face-down on the stairs with a split lip.”
Norma cleared her throat and started over. “ ‘He gazed at the young woman in astonishment. ‘My dear Madam!’ he exclaimed, ‘you are a total stranger to me, I assure you. I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ ”
I yawned and pulled the blanket over my knees. “Correct that to read, ‘He spit out a tooth and muttered about it in German.’ ”
Fleurette jumped down onto the ground as if she were crouching over the prisoner. She was wearing a silk dress of the most astonishing peacock blue with a white fur collar trimmed in velvet. Now that she was making costumes for the theater, she managed to put all sorts of their scraps to use in her own wardrobe. We were seeing quite a bit more feathers and fur than we’d like. “If there’s going to be a motion picture made of you, I’ll take the role. I’ll make a very convincing girl detective.”
“I’m afraid you’d never be cast,” Norma said mildly, without taking her eyes off the newspaper. “It says here that Deputy Kopp has an athletic build and weighs a hundred and eighty pounds.”
“What?” Fleurette cried out.
“They printed that?” I said.
“Well, you do, don’t you?” Norma said.
“At least that. But I didn’t think they’d put it in the paper. They kept asking Sheriff Heath if I was fit for duty as a deputy, and for some reason they demanded to know my height and weight, but I never supposed—”
“Always suppose,” Norma said archly. “You’d better learn how to talk to these reporters if they’re going to keep writing you up like this.”
“I talk to them just fine.”
“At least he’s calling you a deputy now,” Fleurette said.
“The reporters did it first, but Sheriff Heath says it’s for the best. There’s to be no more tiptoeing around the subject now that it’s in the papers. He promises to get my badge after Christmas, and says the Freeholders wouldn’t dare to block my appointment after I’ve caught a fugitive.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t presume to know what the Freeholders will do,” Norma said, and went back to her article. “Did you grab him by the coattails and stick out a neatly shod foot?”
That sent Fleurette into a fit of giggles. “She was wearing those monstrous boots!”
From behind her newspaper, Norma said, “Did you open your handbag with your teeth to get out your handcuffs?”
“What nonsense!” I said. “Read another one. Don’t we have Carrie’s story?”
Norma shuffled through the stack of papers beside her chair. “This must be hers. Where did you meet this girl?”
“Just read it.”
Fleurette settled back on the arm of Norma’s chair and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, this is much better. It says that you were determined to hang on to him, no matter how rough he might be, and that none of the men nearby offered assistance.”
“That’s exactly right,” I said. “Men seem disinclined to come to my aid.”
Norma looked at me over the top of the paper, impressed. “ ‘Having the advantage in weight, he started to hurl her down the subway stairs, but she hung on.’ She says that by the time Sheriff Heath found you, von Matthesius was ‘still writhing in the clasp of his determined captor.’ I do prefer her version.”
She folded the paper and set it aside. “But why is it that the only man who ever seems to come to your rescue is Sheriff Heath?”
I struggled to sit up and defend myself, but the cracked rib bit sharply and sent me back down again. “We were working together!” I stuffed a pillow behind my head so I could get a better look at her. “It was his job to help me get the prisoner. If he’d been the one to catch him, I would’ve rushed to his assistance. What else were we to do?”
“I just wonder what Mrs. Heath has to say about her husband being out all night with a girl deputy,” she said. Fleurette watched the two of us in uncharacteristic silence.
I gave up my struggle with the pillows and tossed them on the floor, lying flat on my back and staring up at the ceiling where three divergent cracks in the plaster had found their way to each other, forming an irregular triangle that was threatening to work loose and fall on us. Could the ceiling really collapse? Was anyone paying attention to the upkeep of our house but me?
Norma’s and Fleurette’s eyes were still on me, so at last I said, “If Mrs. Heath had any idea how dirty and disagreeable our work has been, she wouldn’t be bothered by it in the least.”
“Does she?” Fleurette asked. “Have any idea?”
IN FACT, MRS. HEATH knew exactly how dirty and disagreeable our work had been, because she was called upon to get me polished up in advance of my session with photographers and reporters. I didn’t want anyone to make a picture of me, and Sheriff Heath might not have, either, but the reporters in Brooklyn had hold of the story within hours of von Matthesius’s capture and insisted. Sheriff Heath decided to make the best of it, believing that if reporters had a good picture and a headline about a lady deputy wrestling a man to the ground, every paper in three states would run the story and it might turn the public in his favor. “There’s no point in hiding from the reporters if they’re going to write about us anyway,” he said. “And if they’re talking about us in New York and Pennsylvania, the Hackensack Republican will have to see us in a different light.”
I didn’t think there was any chance of that and told him so.
“Thank you for your ideas,” he answered, “but it’s your obligation to sit for the photographer, and a condition of your continued employment in this department.”
In other words, I was at last to pay my penance for letting von Matthesius escape.
While Deputy Morris took von Matthesius off to be registered, showered, and deloused, the sheriff went straight to the telephone to start ringing newspapers. Along the way he deposited me in his sitting room. Mrs. Heath had returned home just as the sheriff said she would, and sat furiously embroidering a pinecone and a pair of acorns onto a dishtowel.
“Find her something to wear,” was all he said by way of greeting to his wife. “She’s going to be in the papers, and she’s a mess.”
I couldn’t have been more ashamed of myself. There was Cordelia Heath, smelling not at all of brandy, but only of bath powder and rose water, wearing a perfectly pressed afternoon dress the color of fresh butter, her children napping obediently in their own tidy beds, her sitting room an ever more extraordinary tribute to the powers of persistent stitchery. She had completed the tablecloth since I’d seen her last, and on it a trio of nightingales flew about the corners and came to land on a set of dogwood branches in bloom. Around the edges, where anyone else would stitch a border of lace or piping and be done with it, she had taken up her crochet hook and manufactured a few dozen orange butterflies, each affixed to the edge of the tablecloth by a proboscis of purple silk.
With von Matthesius captured and her husband safe, Cordelia had stitched herself back together. It was the best I could hope for her.
But now she had me to contend with yet again. I stood before her in a corduroy dress with the following smeared or spilled upon it: mud, ashes, dust, horse manure, puddle water, dried egg, coffee, sweat, and the blood and other unnamed discharge of an escaped convict.
She attempted a smile. I couldn’t bring myself to return it.
“Well,” she said briskly, “the sheriff seems to have made up his mind without consulting either one of us. I suppose you are
to become quite famous and have all sorts of newspaper stories written about you, which will no doubt give my husband quite a bit more to explain to the Freeholders every week.”
“I don’t think . . .”
“Unless, of course, you refuse to do it. I don’t believe anyone could stop you from walking out the door right now and going home.”
There followed a forced smile that she must have hoped would look friendly but only had the effect of frightening me a little. Cordelia Heath surrounded herself with soft and beautiful things, but there was something altogether rigid and metallic inside her.
“Thank you, but I’ll stay,” was the best I could manage.
“Of course you will.” She looked me up and down again with the air of a woman surveying a muddy and flea-ridden dog. Then she sniffed the air around me delicately. “I just know you would give anything for a bath, but we haven’t the time. Go and get yourself cleaned up any way you can, and I’ll see what I have that might . . .”
Her voice trailed away as she stood up. Even with her hair piled up in one of those fashionable top-knots, she was a good half a head shorter than me. Nothing she owned would fit me.
She waved me nonetheless in the direction of the tiny powder room the family shared. I stripped off my outer garments, leaving only my petticoat and corset cover, which had a lower neckline than I would allow myself to be seen in, but was otherwise fairly substantial for an undergarment. I washed my face and smoothed my hair in a little oval mirror, then applied to my neck a single dusting of Cordelia’s fragrant powder, which sat on the washbasin next to a cake of shaving soap and a tin of tooth powder. I looked no better than I did before, but I felt a half-measure more civilized.
Cordelia returned with her arms full of garments I couldn’t possibly wear. She piled them all on an armchair and started flinging them at me. There was no mirror in the sitting room so I just stood helplessly and let her have her way. She held up first one dress and then another, but I didn’t even bother to look down at them because I knew there was no hope and in fact suspected she was only trying to embarrass me. Then she pulled out a selection of shirtwaists, all beautifully tailored for her slender rib cage. The delicate lines in her brow grew a little deeper with each successive failed attempt, but she kept at it, tossing bits of silk and poplin and tweed at me until she’d exhausted most of the pile.
“You are frightfully large,” she mumbled. Some people would apologize after a remark like that, but she just walked in a circle around me the way one might survey a tree before chopping it down and then said, “They don’t have to photograph all of you, do they?”
“Are you suggesting they take my right half or my left?”
“No, a seated portrait. Just head and shoulders. You see those in the paper.”
“I suppose so.” I didn’t like to imagine where this might be leading. “But wouldn’t they expect a deputy to be standing?”
“Let’s not worry about what they expect,” Cordelia said. “We’ll just insist on it.”
She ran back to her bedroom and returned with a new bundle of clothing. I had no idea a sheriff’s salary could buy so many nice things.
“These come from my mother,” she said, as if she could read my expression. “Now, if it’s only a seated portrait, we don’t have to actually dress you. We can just”—she paused and twirled her arms around me to demonstrate—“wrap you.”
She took a wide shawl the color of copper and draped it over my shoulders, tucking it into the hem of my skirt. Then she produced an enormous silk bow, wider than my head and almost as tall, and pinned it right to the front of the shawl.
“What is that?” I cried, horrified. It looked like the sort of thing Fleurette would have worn when she was twelve. It was a piercing emerald color, and matched nothing else Cordelia had brought out with her.
“The color won’t matter for the picture. And when you’re seated, it’ll look like you’re just wearing a dress with a bow at the neckline.”
I looked ridiculous. The plain, dirty sleeves of my corset cover were only half-hidden by the shawl and the bow. Those three garments had never been put together in such a fashion before, and in a just world they never would again.
I was already scheming to get out of Cordelia’s sitting room and back to my own jail cell. I would have worn one of the prisoner’s uniforms rather than be photographed in the get-up in which I’d just been swaddled. In fact, it was starting to dawn on me that we had at the jail plenty of serviceable dresses for women, and all I had to do was to go downstairs to the laundry and choose one.
A knock came at the door and Sheriff Heath’s voice called, “The fellows just got here. Is she ready?”
How could they have come so fast? Had they nothing else to do? He must have walked over to the courthouse and fetched them.
“Almost!” Cordelia called out. She was enjoying herself now. I was becoming more miserable by the second. I couldn’t allow myself to be photographed like this.
Cordelia turned her back to me and rummaged through her things. “Here it is!” She settled a mink wrap around my shoulders, slowly and ceremoniously, with the air of someone placing a wreath upon a grave. It was lined in unbearably soft brown velvet.
“I can’t wear a fur! I’m a sheriff’s deputy, not an opera singer.”
She seemed not to have heard me. “There’s a hat to match.” She produced an enormous velvet hat, also trimmed in a wide bow, and settled it on my poor condemned head.
Sheriff Heath knocked again at the door. “You can come in now, Bob!” Cordelia called out, before I could stop her.
He rushed in and looked me over without really seeing me. He was like any other man in that he had no opinion on women’s clothing and considered all fashion equally ridiculous. “Fine. They’re coming to my office. We’ll take the picture there, and then you’ll answer some questions.”
“It has to be a seated portrait, dear,” Cordelia said, but the sheriff had already turned to go back to his office.
“Never mind,” she whispered to me. “I’ll go with you and see to it that it’s done properly.”
My humiliation was complete. Having lost the last possible opportunity to slip down to the jail laundry for a house dress, I allowed Cordelia to lead me to the sheriff’s office, where I sat for my first and most preposterous portrait for the newspapers.
NORMA STUDIED THAT PICTURE with a look of dark consternation. Fleurette took it from her and slapped me on the head with it.
“Why didn’t you let me dress you? I would’ve found something smart and suited to the occasion, not this—what is this supposed to be? It looks like a big silk bow right on the front of your blouse.”
“I think it’s supposed to be a big silk bow.” I handed my ice-bag back to Norma, who took it to the kitchen.
“Well, that does it,” Fleurette said. “If you’re going to be a deputy sheriff and have your picture in the papers, I’m going to make you a proper uniform. No, I’ll make you two. No, three. One to keep here, one to keep at the jail, and one to wear. And something lighter in the summer. What would a lady sheriff wear in the summertime?”
“Don’t make it too light,” I said. “It’s rough work.”
“I’ll have to do them soon. Did Norma tell you Mrs. Hansen has offered me a job sewing for the academy? I’ll be there two days a week, and you won’t have to pay for my lessons anymore. I’ll get a salary and free classes.”
I opened my mouth to tell her why she couldn’t do it, but then recognized that I was only acting out of habit and that there was no good reason to stop her. She’d gone out and found useful work for herself. What reason had I to complain?
“That’s just fine,” I said. “Mrs. Hansen sees your talent. I’m not surprised.”
She smiled and returned to her pattern books. I dozed on the divan for the rest of the afternoon. After keeping me in his office all evening so that reporters arriving from Newark and Trenton and New York City could have their turns wi
th me, Sheriff Heath ordered me to take three full days of rest and to see a doctor about my ribs if they weren’t better by the end of it. I was not at all pleased about being sent home, but it was true that I had most likely cracked or dislodged a rib, wrenched my knee, bruised my hip, and given myself any number of other sores and scrapes.
When I awoke on the second day, I hurt worse than when I’d fallen asleep. The third day was even more painful. I could hardly dress myself and shuffled around like an invalid. Norma delivered my meals on a tray but otherwise left me to look after myself. Fleurette fussed around with pillows and bandages, made a bouquet of some silk flowers she must have taken off all the hats in the house, and brought me frivolous magazines that I had no interest in reading.
By the fourth day, the pain had truly settled in and I was beginning to believe that I’d been saddled with a weak knee, a bad hip, and an unreliable rib for the rest of my life. Having accepted that, I decided to go back to work—in a manner of speaking. I wanted to check on something that had been bothering me.
“You aren’t going out!” Fleurette said, jumping up from her sewing machine when she saw me in my coat and hat. It was a frigid and gusty day. The roads were covered in dirty, slushy snow that had hardened to slick ice overnight. There was a kind of swirling wind that seem to come from nowhere at all and blow snowflakes in every direction. It was impossible to tell whether the snow would drift off as capriciously as it had arrived, or whether we were in for a blanket of white before Christmas.
“I’ll be back tonight,” I said. “I’ll have to take the buggy. I can’t possibly walk.”
Norma was outside in her pigeon loft, repairing a torn screen with bailing wire. The pigeons slid as far down their roost as they could go when I approached.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to offend them.”
“Go back to bed.”
“I’m tired of being in bed. I need to go into town. Help me harness Dolley.”
With some reluctance she went with me into the barn. “I don’t like you taking the buggy. You can barely raise your arm.”